Beatrice Ceo Carries The Torch Of Success For Black Businesses

Black Enterprise magazine calls Loida Lewis the head of the largest black-owned business in the nation.

She travels the country promoting a book called, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?

And on Saturday Lewis will have an honored role at the Black Enterprise/NationsBank Entrepreneurs' Conference in Orlando, alongside guest speaker Kweisi Mfume, former congressman and now president and chief executive officer of the NAACP.

Not bad for a woman who took over TLC Beatrice International Holdings less than three years ago - and who isn't black.

Lewis, widow of Beatrice chief Reginald Lewis, is Philippine-born. An immigration lawyer who has published several books, she took over her husband's business in 1994 after his half-brother resigned. Reginald Lewis died of brain cancer in 1993, at the age of 50.

About 700 entrepreneurs have signed up for the conference where Lewis will appear. Other sessions will deal with the state of black business, strategies for business growth and harnessing black spending power.

The conference, which is sold out, runs through Sunday at Walt Disney World's Grand Floridian Beach Resort. Lewis said it is fitting that she continue to serve - as her husband did - as a symbol of success for black entrepreneurs.

"I am the CEO, but the ownership is still controlled by the Lewis family, and the Lewis family remains African-American," she said during a telephone interview before the conference. "It didn't cease to be African-American simply because my husband died."

The New York-based company has sales of $2.1 billion, mostly from specialty foods and supermarkets overseas.

Business pundits already compare Lewis' leadership with her husband's. They point out that although he streamlined the company and cut debt, he was a big spender who was so hard-driven he alienated some of his top staff. In its cover story this month, Working Woman describes Loida Lewis as cutting costs and giving her staff copies of The Little Book of Hugs.

Late last year, Forbes went further, saying "Loida Lewis is probably a better manager than her flamboyant husband was."

Lewis calls comparisons with her husband unfair and has been traveling the country promoting White Guys, his posthumous biography.

"I want people to know about his life because he was a person of color, and a person of color in the United States has a tougher time making it," she said. "Women, people of color - or just people of ordinary means - when they read the book, they will be inspired."

Now that she has become an entrepreneur, Lewis said lack of confidence, not discrimination, is the biggest obstacle for most women in business. And, though she once had to sue for her job as an immigration lawyer, she said being a woman and a minority does not affect her work.